


Swan Song

by FishPrincess



Series: HSWC 2014 Bonus Round 1 [8]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abuse, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gore, Manipulation, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Violence, Violence with Sharp Objects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 08:58:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1934775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishPrincess/pseuds/FishPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remember when Aradia was mind controlled into killing Sollux and just... hung onto his body afterwards? For HSWC Bonus Round 1. A response to a prompt by Dreamwidth user certainlyambiguous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swan Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [certainlyAmbiguous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/certainlyAmbiguous/gifts).



You knew he would let you in because he trusts you more than anyone.

Your feet travel up the stairs in his hive. They are your legs, your socks, your shoes, but your muscles belong to her, now. You know that, this time, she’s going to make you pay. And while your thoughts are your own, while she dares not listen to the doomed voices that plague your mind, she has your body and every part that goes with it. She has your tongue, your voice, and your lips when you tell him that you just had to see your moirail because you missed him so much.

Sollux, it’s not me! I’m right here!

He rolls his eyes, telling her to stop talking like that, he knows she isn’t a suck up. It’s the truth. Vriska cannot emulate your pale relationship. It is yours and his, with a language that only the two of you speak. Already, he knows that you are not yourself today.

But he does not know how much.

His room is the same when you last saw it, wires everywhere, cables, she moves your eyes to look at them. Everything you see, everything you do, is maliciously intended. In what way, you cannot figure out. You can only wait, trapped inside the prison that is your own skin. The voices, you, and her. You can hear her, but she cannot hear you.

What to do first? So many options. He would never let me into his hive, can you believe that? Rude.

The voices whisper death.

“AA, those wires are not that interesting. Probably way more interesting than me, I’ll give you that. Might get more out of a moirallegiance with those wires, eheh.”

Vriska has to know that she cannot successfully take your voice, because you do not respond. You would always respond to his self-deprecating comments, pulling him up when he pushed himself down. This is what you do for each other, a beautiful balance in an exclusive bond.

Your feet roam about the room, searching, looking, and you open drawers. She’s looking for something, but for what, you don’t know. He has a large collection of blank CDs, of flash drives, and external hard drives. His eyes watch you, and you sense how unsettled he is in watching you play out such abnormal behavior.

“Could you not, AA? I have a system.”

You find a pair of scissors in a drawer, and your fingers slip through them. Their sharpness frightens you, but only now, in this moment. Assuming they will be used to cut paper is naïve. Instead, your hand moves around to the back of your neck, and you are certain she is going to kill you.

“AA?”

He’s watching you now, and you hear the scissors cut, long curled pieces of black hair falling to the ground below in a pile. Your other hand feels what is left of your hair, and it is above your shoulders for the first time in your life. Within you, a childish hope grows for this to be it. She is looking to embarrass you in front of someone you care deeply for. This is something you can explain, something harmless, and with it, you will know everything will be okay.

“I needed a change,” you hear yourself say, in a voice that is yours but not yours at the same time. It fluctuates like hers, but it keeps your tone.

Your hair is gone, and it pains you, but deep down you know it will be only a casualty of today’s visit.

“Are you insane? You’re actually insane,” he says, his words edged with a concern that makes your heart ache. Your feelings are connected. “You going to give me an explanation or just keep doing stupid shit like chop off your hair in my room? What’s next, are you going to brush your teeth? No, shit, that was awful, forget I said that. Sorry, that was a stupid comeback.”

You lower your hand, but you have not yet released the scissors. You laugh, but it’s not your laugh, and he notices. Of course he does. He stares at you, and you stare back with a smile.

“I’m feeling a little off today,” you say. “I think I need a hug.”

You would never say anything like this, neither of you would. She’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, and you know he won’t fall for it. He can’t.

He approaches you anyway. “If it’ll stop you from acting so fucking weird.”

You should know better, of course he would walk right into this. He agreed to be your moirail, he agreed to stick this life out with you until the end, no matter how strange you’re acting, no matter the stupid things you say, no matter the fact that you have sharp scissors in your hand.

His arms wrap around you, and you know. You know the instant he holds you, when your pusher pounds hard and fast against your chest and your lungs freeze. She uses the adrenaline of your panic to shove the end of the scissors directly into the side of his neck. Yellow blood spurts out against the wall, and he chokes, and he falls to the ground with a loud and sickening thump.

If she lets go now, he has a chance. The scissors are still lodged in his neck. If she just lets go, if she lets go now, you can save him, you can explain. It doesn’t matter if he ever lets you explain if you can make sure he lives.

With his glasses on the ground beside him, he twists just slightly, the blood spilling out of the wound. A small puddle of yellow begins to form as his body twitches.

One more thing, before I let you go.

You kneel down beside Sollux’s body, and his eyes watch you. There is a look of fear in his eyes, telling you all you need to know. Shock, betrayal, sadness, pain. Despite losing control of your body, your will wracks your soul enough for your hands to shake. She notices her grip begins to loosen, and her time is running out.

“Arrivederci, Captor,” you say, your heart stopping the moment your hands grab the end of the scissors and yank them out.

And that is when she lets you go.

You hit the ground as you scramble, your limbs shaky and tired and sore from internal battle. Sollux moans quietly, yellow blood no longer forming a small puddle but a tiny pond. You apply pressure to the hole in his neck with your hands in desperation, but it does not work. Both of you are covered, soaked, stained, and you rip off your shirt as if you planned to make a tourniquet.

Above the ceiling, a loud banging ensues. Stomping only achieved by large feet. A loud hysterical wailing carries within the walls of the hive. On the roof, a lusus mourns.

It takes less than a minute for Sollux’s body to cease in entirety. You would attempt to resuscitate him if his blood hasn’t already covered the majority of the carpet in his room. The minute he stops, you fall on top of him, loudly crying and screaming, joining the desperate grieving of his caretaker.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” There is so much you want to say, but nothing else comes out. It provides a miniscule amount of comfort to pretend that it matters now.

Your clothes are warm and wet, but you shiver against him, your head in his shirt. Even when the blood dries, he will remain on your skin forever. For now, you will be here as long as he lets you. And with no way of protest, you plan on being here forever.

Hours pass, and he does not move. The room begins to smell, so you choose not to breathe out of your nostrils. He has seen you at your worst, he has ridden through every facet of your personality, your presence, and if she thinks you will not do the same for him, then she has no understanding of what he is to you, of what you are to each other.

You hear the voices of the deceased, but you cannot hear him. And for once, you want to. His is the only voice you want to hear. Through sobs, you ask him to speak to you, but he does not.

You remember, when you hold him in your arms, the day he showed up at your hive unannounced There was something wrong, but he never told you what it was until the day after. He needed someone, he needed you, and so you sat with him in your room. Your lusus curled up against him as he sat on his laptop, clicking around for the sake of clicking around. While moirails talked, so did you, but there was still the same amount of comfort provided in sitting silently alone with one another.

You never sang in front of people, only to yourself. When you tidied up your collections of discoveries and personal treasures, you always sang. You nearly forgot he was there when you slipped, and your voice carried away. Heat rose to your cheeks when he asked if you were singing, and, flustered, you tried to change the topic. He then told you that you didn’t have to stop. It wasn’t horrible, the sound didn’t make him want to die. So you continued, and within a few minutes, he was using your lusus as a pillow, the light from his computer screen lighting up his face.

And now, you decide, you will sing to send him off. And so you do.

You sing through tears, you sing when your throat is dry and cracked and hurting, you sing for days, and days, and days. And he rests, and he rots, and the blood dries against you. You don’t know how long it’s been, you lost count of the nights and the days. You will not let the wild creatures feast upon him, like what is customary on your planet. Instead, you stay with him until he is no longer recognizable.

You sing when you take his body into the forest, and you sing when the flames build into ashes, and you sing when it reaches you. You consider letting the blazes devour you, too, but both of you have already experienced death.

You will be his eyes now that he can no longer see, and you will live for him. You will be his voice. When the flames die down, you head home, covered in the remnants of his body and his blood.

Through you, he lives on.

And you will make her pay.


End file.
